The Saskatchewan government says it is willing to discuss classroom size and composition outside of contract talks with teachers and education partners, but is still refusing to negotiate the issues into the next collective agreement for the province's 13,500 teachers/ Getty Images

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The Saskatchewan government says it is willing to discuss classroom size and composition with the province’s teachers, but not in the context of ongoing negotiations for their next collective agreement.

Instead, the province is proposing discussions with “education partners” aimed at resolving what the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation has said is the most important issue to more than half its 13,500 members.

While the STF is encouraged by the government’s acknowledgment that the issue is important, it is not backing down from its previous position that teachers won’t be “bought off” on getting the issue into a contract.

“What I’m suggesting is we set up a provincial table and start having conversations about this, and see what we can do jointly … to start developing a framework for how to deal with a very complex issue,” Education Minister Gord Wyant said.

The details are still being worked out but the government’s plan would likely involve teachers, school board trustees and others. Wyant said no specific timeline is in place for the proposed talks to begin, or what form they would take.

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STF President Patrick Maze panned the government’s pitch, calling it “yet another committee” to address an issue everyone already knows is a problem. What is needed now, he continued, is not conversation but action.

“It’s time for action with accountability attached to it,” Maze said, adding that including a mechanism for ensuring each classroom across the province has sufficient resources in a new contract is the only way to accomplish that.

Class size and composition — essentially the number of students with significant needs in each classroom — are widely understood to be an issue across the province, in large urban centres and smaller rural ones.

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Neither side, meanwhile, appears to have revised their monetary offers.

The province is offering teachers a $1,500 bonus funded from their health plan surplus this year followed by two per cent raises in 2020 and 2021. The STF wants a two per cent raise this year and three per cent in each of the next two.

With neither side budging on whether class size and composition should be in the contract, a $40-million fund proposed by the STF as a means of solving the problem appears to be off the table. Wyant said it left many questions unanswered.

Both sides also disagree about the timing of Wednesday’s proposal. Wyant denied that the province is attempting to get out ahead of the teachers in the uncharted waters of public bargaining and said those at the table knew the new proposal was coming.

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Maze, meanwhile, said that was not the case and suggested everyone at the negotiation table — talks resumed Wednesday after a four-week break — was surprised by it. He went on to suggest Wyant, who controls the purse strings, should “pull up a chair.”

Relations between the government and teachers have been fractious since the deeply unpopular 2017-18 budget slashed $54 million from the roughly $1.9-billion education budget — funds that have been restored in subsequent budgets.

The Saskatchewan NDP has sent strong signals that it plans to capitalize on tension in the sector and make education reform a major issue heading into the next provincial election, which is scheduled for the fall of 2020.

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While the province’s latest offer brings both sides into public agreement on the seriousness of the issue, it remains unclear how the province and the STF will find a way around the line in the sand drawn earlier this year.

Wyant said he hopes the province’s offer helps.

“We’re having some good-faith negotiations at the bargaining table and hoping that the teachers will take some comfort in the fact that I want to open up a provincial conversation about this and that they’ll be receptive.”

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